Automated coding and selection of causes of death in Peru: a descriptive study, 2016-2019

OBJECTIVE: to describe software performance in the automatic selection of the underlying cause of death in Peru, between 2016 and 2019. METHODS: this was a descriptive study on the software performance in the automated selection of the underlying cause of death over the years (chi-square test for trend) and the correlation between the type of death certificate and software performance (correlation coefficient and coefficient of determination). RESULTS: a total of 446,217 death certificates were analyzed; the proportion of death certificates with the underlying cause of death increased from 69.6% in 2016 to 78.8% in 2019 (p-value < 0.001); it could be seen a direct linear correlation between electronic death certificates and software performance (correlation coefficient = 0.95; R(2) = 0.89). CONCLUSION: the software showed good performance in the automatic selection of the underlying cause of death, with a significant increase between 2016 and 2019.